Lunch and Learn event helps businesses adapt to AI

Local business owners learned about the value of artificial intelligence Tuesday, Aug. 15, during a Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce Lunch and Learn event at The Bank of Missouri in Cape Girardeau.

The panel featured a trio of presenters, all experts in startup AI-focused businesses.

"Change is coming and I really want local businesses to shift from being threatened (by AI) to being the threat," said chamber member Aaron Smothers, the chief technologies officer at www.Lobby.so.

His company offers AI coding services and he told around 20 people in the audience that AI can be used to relieve both their own and their employees' work-related issues.

"AI isn't going to replace us as people ... it's not intelligent," Smothers said. "It's artificial languages is what it is ... but it seems intelligent because we add in the gaps."

Around 20 business owners attended the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce Lunch and Learn presentation Tuesday, Aug. 15, at The Bank of Missouri in Cape Girardeau. A trio of presenters showed them ways of adapting to new artificial intelligence technologies.CHRISTOPHER BORRO

Around 20 business owners attended the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce Lunch and Learn presentation Tuesday, Aug. 15, at The Bank of Missouri in Cape Girardeau. A trio of presenters showed them ways of adapting to new artificial intelligence technologies.CHRISTOPHER BORRO

Speaker Sho Rust serves as the CEO of www.SHO.ai, an AI-enabled bank management company. He said his goal at the presentation was to introduce AI to people as a tool.

"It means talking about mitigating some of the risks, but also about how they can implement AI into their workflow to improve the customer experience, whatever that may be," Rust said.

Rust said some AI has begun outperforming humans in certain tasks. However, he added a human working alongside an AI routinely provides better results than the programming alone.

"This is one of those technologies where you have to adapt," Rust said. "... It's a technological revolution but it's happening a lot faster than anything I've seen in the past."

Smothers said newer AI can even go so far as to tell users what they do not know, something he said was in the realm of science fiction just a few years ago.

The third speaker was Will Wilder, founder of Atlas Automations. He recommended business owners try out various AI for themselves and gradually word questions and inputs to get more descriptive responses for whatever problem they might be trying to solve.

Wilder recommended the attendees seek out AI-focused videos or newsletters to get a better idea of what services would work best for their needs.

While they were explaining the ins and outs of AI use, the presenters answered some questions from the audience. They reminded attendees that AI follows programmable rules and can be adjusted to fit certain specifications and can localize any information provided.

Wilder said anyone using AI should start small and basic, but that it can be an excellent tool for idea generation.